The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on December 15, 2016.
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Today's Highlights:
- Don't Get Caught In a Phishing Hack
- Outlook 2016 and Run-a-Script Rules
- Sharing Customer Manager Records
- Office 365 Subscription Giveaway
See you next year!
This is our last issue of Exchange Messaging Outlook for 2016. I'm taking a couple of weeks off and will be back in January 2017.
I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday season and a Happy New Year!
Don't Get Caught In a Phishing Hack
Anyone who follows US political news may have seen the report in the New York Times article this week on email hacks:
A phishing email that originated from a hacking group landed in a mailbox. The message was forwarded to a computer technician to make sure it was legitimate before anyone clicked on the ‘change password’ button. The technician mistyped "illegitimate" as "legitimate" and someone clicked on the link (believing it was a valid message) and changed the password, which gave the hacker access to the mailbox.
While the technician's error is a big one, the fault lies with the people who clicked the link. Had they opened a browser, typed "gmail.com" in the address bar, went into Settings and changed the password, the technician's typo wouldn't have mattered. Yes, it's extra steps, but it is the safest way to avoid accidently giving up your password to the bad guys. When you do this, it doesn't matter if the message is legitimate - the password is secure.
If you don't want to change your password needlessly, check the From address and the URL the link points to. Some, but not all, phishing emails will not be sent from the expected address: if the address is questionable, the message is probably not legitimate. Drag the message to the Junk Email folder to convert it to plain text so you can see the underlying URLs. Hovering the mouse over the hyperlink may display the URL in a screentip too, if not, you'll need to view the message source to check the URL. If the domain before the first single backslash is not your mail domain, it's probably not legit and it should be deleted. If you aren't sure, don't click the link! Open a web browser, log into your account and change the password.
If the URL is hyperlinked in the message (instead of a pretty hyperlink), and looks to be legitimate, don't click the link. The underlying URL could be different. If you are 100% sure the visible URL is valid, select it, copy and paste into the address bar if you don't want to retype it.
Outlook 2016 and Run-a-Script Rules
Office 2016 Insiders who use a run-a-script rules to be aware that the scripts are currently disabled, thanks to a security issue. See The option to "Run a Script" has disappeared from the Outlook rules
While only Office Insiders are currently affected, this will affect all Office 2016 users if/when this is released to general availability in the future.
One option is to convert the run-a-script to an ItemAdd macro. Depending on the conditions in your rule, converting it to an ItemAdd macro may be as simple as adding the application startup macro, renaming the script, and adding an If statement. For information on using ItemAdd macros, see How to use an ItemAdd Macro.
Sharing Customer Manager Records
The new Office 365 Outlook 2016 Customer Manager now allows you to share contacts, companies and deals with the other members of your Customer Manager team. To share selected contacts, companies, or deals, slide the Share switch at the bottom of the form. To stop sharing, slide the Share switch to the off position.
Customer Manager is available to Office 365 Business Premium subscribers. For more information, see Outlook Customer Manager FAQ
Office 365 Subscription Giveaway
Reminder: I have 5 Office 365 Home subscriptions and 2 Office 365 Personal subscriptions to give away. The requirements to enter are easy: send an email to dec2016@slipstick.com to enter. I'll draw names at the end of January 2017.
Office 365 Home is the consumer subscription with 5 Office desktop licenses for anyone in your household. It includes licenses for Office apps on smartphone and tablets, 1TB OneDrive, and 60 Skype minutes. Office 365 Personal a license for one computer and 1 tablet or smartphone plus includes the expanded OneDrive and Skype minutes.
If you have a subscription for Office 365 consumer software and win, the key can be applied to your account immediately to extend your subscription for 1 year from your current expiration date.
More information on Office 365 Home subscriptions is at Office 365 Home.
New & Updated Exchange KB Articles
How to troubleshoot issues in which Outlook crashes or stops responding (hangs) when it's used with Office 365
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2413813
IMAP 'unread' read notifications aren't suppressed in Exchange Server 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3201350
Mailbox search from Exchange Management Shell fails with invalid sort value in Exchange Server 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3186620
Messages for the health mailboxes are stuck in queue on Exchange Server 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3208840
FIX: MSExchangeOWAAppPool application pool consumes memory when it recycles and is marked as unresponsive by Health Manager
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3202998
Public folders indexing doesn't work correctly after you apply latest cumulative updates for Exchange Server
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3202691
Set-Mailbox and New-Mailbox cmdlets prevent the use of the -Office parameter in Exchange Server 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3201358
Update Rollup 16 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3184730
Update Rollup 22 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3184712
Update to apply MessageCopyForSentAsEnabled to any type of mailbox in Exchange Server 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3193138
You can't restore items to original folders from Recoverable Items folder in Exchange Server 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3199270
You can't select the receive connector role when you create a new receive connector in Exchange Server 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3199353
FIX: 'Logs will not be generated until the problem is corrected' error in an Exchange Server 2016 environment
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3209036
Changing virtual directory URLs by using EAC removes all forms of authentication in Exchange Server 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3212580
Cumulative Update 4 for Exchange Server 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3177106
New & Updated Office 365 KB Articles
December 13, 2016, update for Microsoft Office
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3208595
MS16-148: Description of the security update for Office 2013: December 13, 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3127968
MS16-148: Security Update for Microsoft Office to Address Remote Code Execution: December 13, 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3204068
December 13, 2016, update for Microsoft Office
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3208595
MS16-148: Description of the security update for Office for Mac 2011 14.7.1: December 13, 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3198808
MS16-148: Security Update for Microsoft Office to Address Remote Code Execution: December 13, 2016
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3204068
New & Updated Outlook KB Articles
How to troubleshoot issues in which Outlook crashes or stops responding (hangs) when it's used with Office 365
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2413813
Room Finder problems with meetings that aren't in 30-minute intervals
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3210448
'Cannot copy this folder because it may contain private items' error in Outlook
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3205975
December 13, 2016, update for Microsoft Office
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3208595
Other Resources
Multiple Retention and Archive Policies
Use Retention Tags to archive messages, then delete them from the archive at a later date.
iCloud Doesn't Sync
If the iCloud add-in is not syncing Outlook Calendar and Contacts, verify it is enabled in Options, Add-ins. You may need to edit the registry if it won't stay enabled.
Enable Mailbox Auditing in Office 365
How to enable auditing on an Office 365 mailbox.
Blocking Mail From New Top-Level Domains
How to block junk mail and spam sent from the new top-level domains in Outlook.